by Tim Weaver
‘I told you to walk the other way,’ Michael said. ‘I tried to help you. All I want is to go back to helping those in need.’
‘You fucked with the wrong people, David,’ Malcolm said, coming around the sofa. ‘The minute I found out Mary was going to you, I knew it would end in bloodshed.’
I glanced around me. Nothing to pick up. No weapons.
‘You don’t give up secrets worth protecting,’ he said. He moved up close to me. Nose to nose. ‘Not without a fight, anyway. You’ve injured us, killed us and called in the police – but good will always triumph over evil.’
I spat the sweet into his face.
He backed away, wiping his chin with the back of his hand.
‘I’m going to enjoy this,’ he said.
Behind me, Mary tried to scream, as if she could see what was coming next – and I felt the gun move a fraction across the back of my head as Michael tried to contain her.
I ducked below the barrel of the gun, dropped my shoulder and made a dash for the kitchen. Michael fired. A bullet fizzed off right, hitting the top of the wall on the far side of the room. The sound was devastatingly loud, ringing in my ears, even as I made for the basement. Behind me, over my shoulder, I could see Michael pushing Mary away. She made a break for
Malcolm and Michael headed after me.
I took the basement stairs so quickly I almost fell down. The lights were off. I headed for the place Mary and I had been sitting before, and sank back into the darkness.
It was black.
Above me I could hear movement, but not much. The occasional creak. A short whisper. I tried to force my eyes to adjust quicker to the darkness, but it was like trying to force yourself to hear something that wasn’t there. Darkness became shapes. Shapes became movement. I shifted right, my back against the wall, trying to give myself a clearer view of the stairs.
Then the lights came on.
For a moment I was completely disabled, as if I’d been hit in the face with a concrete block. Then, as the white light started to dim, shapes formed again, blurs becoming edges, and I could see them coming down the stairs, Malcolm taking two at a time, Michael limping more slowly behind him.
Malcolm had the gun out in front of him.
I looked around me. About six feet further to my right were the electrics. Next to that, propped against the wall, were the walking sticks I’d seen earlier. They were thin and breakable. Except for one. It was thick, maybe three inches wide, with a hard ball for a handle.
There was a cardboard box close to it, probably four feet deep, with a second box, smaller, on top. I edged to my right, half-crouching, using the cardboard
I got to the electrics box and flipped the front. Rust had eaten into the casing, but the wires looked new. There were a series of switches across the top and a main red lever to the left. I reached down and gripped the walking stick, turning it over so I was holding it at the tip and not by the handle. Then I flipped the red lever.
Everything went black again.
In the darkness, sound became important. I heard shuffling. Frustration. Readjustment. One of them said something quietly, but not quietly enough. It sounded like Malcolm.
I ducked left again, back towards the place I’d been before. In the stillness, I could feel little stabbing pains right inside the cuts on my back, travelling through the torn flesh and up to the surface of the skin. And as my brain registered that, it remembered the pain in the fingers of my left hand too, moving down from the remains of my nails to my knuckles and wrists. A shiver passed through me.
As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I could see one of them, edging towards me without knowing it. Michael. He was nervous, moving tentatively, way out of his depth. The strapping around his leg looked like an amateur job. They hadn’t taken it outside the organization. Someone within it, probably someone with some medical knowledge, had removed the bullet.
Within seconds, something else caught my eye. On the other side of the electrics box, I could see Malcolm. He was coming around one of the cardboard box pillars, half-covered. The gun was out in front of him. It was difficult to define him, but I could see some of his face and a circle of light in his eyes.
His eyes. He can see you.
I used the wall as a springboard and went for Michael, just as he was turning to face me. A third shot hit the space I’d left, ripping through cardboard and into the garden tools. They clattered to the floor behind me.
I swung the stick into Michael’s knees, and he collapsed on all fours. As his fingers grabbed hold of a piece of wood nearby, I thumped the fat end of the stick into the base of his spine. He howled in pain, and went down on his stomach, flat to the floor, his hand clutching the area I’d hit. His eyelids fluttered and both of his legs twitched.
He was quiet.
I peered around the box, back to where Malcolm had been. He was gone. Only darkness now. If he was gone, he was coming back towards the middle of the room.
As I turned he was on to me. A huge hand clamped on to my face, trying to cover my mouth, trying to force me away from him so he could get a clear shot. I could see the gun, could see him trying to jab it towards me, but I managed to knock him off balance, punching the stick into his gut. He stumbled, landing against one of the boxes, the cardboard pillar toppling to the floor.
I shoulder-charged him, lifting him off his feet, and pushed him down to the ground. The gun spun off, out of his grasp, turning circles across the floor.
But then my body locked.
Suddenly, the pain in my back erupted. Something ruptured in the cuts, and I could feel flesh tear and blood run, my vision blurring as if a nailbomb had gone off in my head. I stumbled sideways, reaching out for whatever was nearest.
It was Malcolm.
He was in front of me now, on his feet, pushing boxes aside so I couldn’t get at them for support. I stumbled further towards him, and he threw a punch that hit me square in the face. I went down hard, on to my hip, and cried out as the impact sent a tremor through my back.
He came at me a second time, turning me over. This time, something – maybe adrenalin, or instinct – helped me block his punch with an arm. I jabbed my right hand into his throat. He wheezed, a sound like air leaving a valve, and stumbled back towards what little light there was, coming from upstairs.
But then he came at me again, kicking me in the side of the head. I wheeled around, cracking my cheek on something hard. The walking stick fell out of my grasp. Then he hit me again. Hard. Right in the ear. A ringing sound passed through my skull. The room span for a moment, coming back into focus in time to see him land a third punch. He’d tried to get me in the throat, the same place I’d got him, but instead hit my collarbone.
But the blow to the head had paralysed me.
My body was broken. Everything they’d done to me had finally caught up. They’d shut me down. Relentlessly burnt away my strength until all that was left were ashes.
Malcolm stood unsteadily and looked down at me.
‘I was prepared to give you a second chance, David,’ he said breathlessly. ‘Do you remember that? We told you not to get involved.’
He wiped some blood away from his nose.
‘But I can’t help you a third time.’
He stepped over me and went for the gun. I tried to get up, but I didn’t have the strength. Every wound that had been carved into my body over the last few days started to come back to life, snapping away at me, scratching at me, swallowing whatever fight I had left.
I coughed, blood spilling out over my lips, and opened my hands and lay there. Waiting to be shot.
Then, in my hand, I felt something.
I turned my head and, to my side, about four feet away, I saw Mary. She was huddled in the corner, partially lit by the light from upstairs. She’d crept down into the basement. Tears were running down her face, her eyes following Malcolm. She was down behind one of the boxes to the left of where he’d been.
She glanced at Malcolm again,
back at me, then away.
I heard Malcolm pick up the gun.
When I looked again, back to Mary, I could see what she’d put in my hand. The walking stick. Somewhere in her eyes I could see a small spark of hope. As if, whatever came next, had to be better than this.
Slowly, painfully, I forced myself up.
Malcolm was looking down at the gun, checking it was primed.
I caught him across the back of the head with the stick. The impact sounded soft and hollow. He went down as if every muscle in his body had immediately stopped working. I hit him again when he crashed to the floor, the ball of hard wood at the end of the stick slapping in against his stomach. The third time no sound came from him.
Mary continued crying from the same position.
Distantly I could hear sirens.
I collapsed to the floor and looked at Mary. My
‘Are you okay, David?’ she said, wiping tears from her face.
Slowly, I reached into my pocket and removed my phone.
‘I need you…’ I coughed, could taste blood in my mouth. ‘I need you to call someone. Her name is Liz.’ I coughed a second time. ‘Tell her I’m in trouble.’
And then I finally drifted away.
The most difficult thing was getting back. When the police turned up at the farm, the kids were taken into a temporary shelter where the authorities probably thought their suffering would end. A group of stolen lives they’d brought back into the cold light of day.
But Malcolm and Michael knew differently.
The majority of the kids had come to rely so heavily on what the farm brought to them, they were no longer prepared for the outside world; a world that had damaged them irreparably the first time round. The Calvary Project had ensured the people they were supposed to be redeeming would never be fully prepared for the return. They had been robbed of their identities. They had been robbed of their memories. They were taken back to their families, but to families who thought they were dead. On both sides it was like starting again; like having a stranger inside your home.
Alex was different because Alex remembered most of his past. He just wanted to keep it buried. There was an irony to that – after all, keeping secrets buried was what life on the farm was about. He could have lived out the rest of his days there and never heard Al’s name mentioned again. But Alex could see the sacrifice he’d have to make – relinquishing control to a
I spoke to Mary about two weeks after the police led us away from the house. By the time she called, I was a fortnight into recovery. They’d cut a hole in the cling film, and given me an injection in my back so I wouldn’t feel them cut away the rest. By the time they were finished, I had sixty-two stitches in my back, three in my foot, and a doctor telling me I might never recover all the feeling in my two injured fingers.
Mary cried the entire time we were on the phone. She’d lost her son, and now she had lost her husband as well – the man she’d spent years caring for. Every day she’d been by his side because every day she feared it might be his last. I didn’t tell her I knew how it felt. Derryn would always be a part of me, her face so clear in the darkness, her voice so clear in my head. For Mary, Malcolm would only be a reflection obscured by ripples. A convicted drug dealer and kidnapper, eventually charged with manslaughter, who she knew nothing about.
I looked at Malcolm as the police led him out, and, in his eyes, saw the trade. I wouldn’t mention the girl who’d had his child, Simon and all the others who had died under his watch, and neither he nor Michael
Liz sat with me during the interviews, mostly in silence, as it became obvious early on that the police weren’t going to charge me with anything. They could see my injuries. They could see what sort of people they were dealing with. More difficult, though, than lying to the detectives, was lying to her. I think, deep down, she knew I wasn’t being honest with her, but she never said anything. A part of me liked her even more for that.
The farm and Angel’s stayed Malcolm’s. The deeds were in his name. No one could touch them. The last time Mary ever visited him in prison, he told her he’d use the money to start again on his own when he got out. She never went to see him after that.
Michael wasn’t so lucky. He only got two years after striking a deal with the police, but he had no money to come back to and no reason to come out. He was the man people had trusted. The man they confided in. Now he was nothing to anyone, just a topic of discussion on Sunday mornings. Malcolm had gone down, and taken Michael with him, and while Michael would be getting out of prison first, he’d return to nothing. No job. No house. No life.
*
Sometimes the good things were worth fighting for.
I drove back to Carcondrock about a month after Malcolm and Michael had tried to kill me. I buried the box full of photographs, because it seemed like the right thing to do. I called Kathy to tell her Alex was alive, and then Cary, but couldn’t tell either of them more than that, for all the reasons I couldn’t tell Mary. Every day, Alex nudged a little closer to the light, carrying the weight of what his father had done, and what he himself had done to Al. When he got there, he could tell all his friends himself – and he could finally explain to Kathy face to face why he left, and why she was never a mistake.
When I filled in the hole, after burying the box, there wasn’t enough sand. The top of the hole sank in, making it look disturbed. I didn’t want to leave it like that, but there was a kind of resonance to it. Because each of those memories – every photograph in that box – had been disturbed a little as well.
Finally, on my way home, I stopped at the cemetery.
But this time there were no birds in the trees. No
And Derryn had gone with it.
When I got home that night, the house felt different. I couldn’t explain it, wasn’t even sure I was meant to. But it felt more welcoming, as if something had changed. I didn’t put the TV on, like I always did when I got home. I forgot about it. And by the time I became conscious of the fact that I hadn’t, I was in the shower in the bathroom wiping soap from my eyes. Afterwards, I felt a strange compulsion to be close to Derryn’s things, and sat on the edge of the bed, running my fingers down the spines of her books.
The next time I really became lucid, clear about what I was doing, it was three o’clock in the morning, and I was staring up at the ceiling. For the first time in a long time, I’d gone back to the bedroom and fallen asleep in our bed. And the sound I was hearing, on the boundaries of sleep, wasn’t the sound of the television as it always was.
It was the sound of something else.
My thoughts were of Derryn, looking across at me from her rocking chair the first time I ever considered helping someone. Everything about her was so clear to me. I had a feeling wash over me, the feeling that this was the end of one stage of my life and the beginning of another. And then I heard that same sound again.
There are a great many people who have helped with the writing of this book.
My agent Camilla Bolton has been a constant source of guidance and encouragement, and is always armed to the teeth with incredible ideas and suggestions. Plus, she pretends to laugh at my jokes, and never fails to answer an email (even the really boring ones, of which there are many). Maddie Buston and everyone else at Darley Anderson also deserve a special mention for all their hard work and support, and for getting behind me from day one.
A big thank you to my editor Stefanie Bierwerth, who took a chance on a book by a first-time author and whose eye for a story helped to massively improve the novel when it arrived on her desk. She was also kind enough to give me a say in other areas of publication when she really didn’t have to. I also want to say a huge thanks to the fantastic team at Penguin, who have worked so tirelessly on my behalf.
The ‘Just Switch It On And Let Him Talk’ award goes to Bruce Bennett, whose fascinating tales of police life provided more hours of Dictaphone tape than I could ever hope to use (or want to transcribe). Any errors are entirely of my own
making.
Find out more about the next David Raker thriller at www.timweaverbooks.com
